Larger parent ships often recover smaller surface water vessels, such as manned or unmanned surface water vessels (USVs) to perform refueling operations. Typically, the recovery of a smaller vessel is accomplished by driving the smaller vessel alongside a stationary parent ship and lifting the smaller vessel by davit into the parent ship. Alternatively, the smaller water vessel may be driven up a ramp into the larger ship.
Traditional refueling evolutions take a large amount of time during which both the host ship and small surface water vessel are committed to a particular course heading and speed while the small vessel is being recovered, making the host ship more vulnerable to an attack. There are also a limited number of host ships capable of launching, recovering and refueling unmanned surface water vessels in an operational area, thus creating an operational dependency between the host vessel and the USV such that the host vessel is in transit range of the smaller unmanned surface water vessel at all times. Similarly, unmanned smaller vessels and the ship may incur damage during the launch, recovery, and refueling process due to unwanted relative motions created by the dynamic seaway as the small water vessel transitions from water to the host platform.
It is desired to capture and perform maintenance activities such as refueling on the smaller surface water vessels at the parent ships, but without having to load the smaller surface water vessels onto the parent ships. Thus, the amount of time spent refueling the small water vessels would be reduced and damages to the smaller vessels caused by loading and unloading from the parent ship would be avoided. It is also desired to provide maintenance activities such as refueling, while the parent ship is in motion, at a safe enough distance from the parent ship, so that the smaller water vessel is not compromised by the wake of the parent ship, causing unwanted contact and damages. It is further desired to enable a large number of larger ships to be potential fuel donors without having to launch and recover the small water vessel and to permit multiple locations on one ship where refueling operations can take place without the need to launch and recover the USV.